Notch collar jackets – sources of sewing advice

There are many classic notch collar blazers in high fashion magazines this season.

I last made a notch collar jacket in the early 60s (50 years ago – aargh !!). Many memories of making and wearing it. A Vogue Dior double breasted suit with wide collar. Made in an asymmetric stripe wool. I still remember the stripes matching across the bound buttonholes with amazement and pride. And I chose to use the first non-woven interfacings, which were like cardboard. I suspect I’m never going to recover from my resulting dislike of non-wovens :D Ah but beautiful beautiful buttons.

That was a work suit. Long before Yves Saint-Laurent made pant suits acceptable for women (no tights/ pantyhose either). For me, a previous sewing and styling lifetime (I didn’t make clothes at all for about 30 years). Goodness, reminds me of the bed-sit I was living in at the time – complete with one-bar electric fire, putting shillings in the meter for hot water, and a handwheel black and gold Singer sewing machine.

Aren’t we lucky with modern standards of living – and the modern free choice of wearing our own style. But I still keep thinking I ‘ought’ to make one of these ‘proper’ jackets as they represent the height of sewing skills, even though I know I would never wear it. That ridiculous requirement has kept me collecting information. So here are some links, in case they’re useful to anyone.

There are many different design details in blazers, as I talked about in my post on notch collar styles. And any of these details might affect whether you feel comfortable and happy and at your best. So get to know what works for your shape and personal style. I’ll just mention a few patterns for specific purposes.

Collars aren’t all there is to consider with high-end jacket making skills. There can also be multiple layers of special support structures for roll line, shoulders and armholes, sleeve head, and vents, as well as techniques for quality buttonholes and pockets.

One way of sorting out all the different techniques is to say there are three levels of difficulty. This popular book gives instructions for using : fusible interfacing, machine sewn – not fusible interfacing, custom sewn with traditional handwork : Tailoring : the classic guide.

Peggy Sagers’ DVD Factory Tips and Techniques 1 : Making Blazers also shows quick and easy techniques. (The only jacket DVD I’ve watched. Mixed enthusiasm about recommending it as there’s no menu. But the content is good, if you can bear to go through it making a list of timings so you can re-view it without too much pain. You’d never guess without viewing, but it also has good tips on sewing band collars and fly zips.)

The Sewing Guru has extensive on-line sew-along videos about two types of jacket making : industrial and tailoring. Use the free sign up to have a good look round – when you sign up you get an e-mail on how to log in. With a PayPal account it’s easy to cancel.

The simplest blazer patterns involve no more skills than a basic blouse : darts or princess seams, buttons and buttonholes, faced neckline, collar without band, one-piece fitted sleeve without cuff. Such as Butterick 4138, with interfacing only in collar and facing, shoulder pads, 1-piece sleeve, simple or no pockets, and no lining. (Now oop, and just an example of a very simple style, the instructions aren’t special.)

More complex jacket patterns include more support structures, 2-piece sleeves, welt or flap pockets, and lining. These are some patterns which people have recommended for the instructions :

Why not list fashion-incubator.com whose tutorials have yielded my first swearing-free linings with much better results than previously?
I’d also refer to the sewalong on paatern-scissors-cloth http://buzzybeesworld.blogspot.com/ which she misleadingly calls RTW tailoring, but which is about modern tailoring using fusibles.

PS: I also agree with you that I wouldn’t wear a blazer even if I made it myself, so there’s not much point in getting into the masochist competition of how much work we can make for ourselves. If I’m in a mood for self-torture, I prefer a good, warm winter coat..